


honest thieves

by driedvoices



Category: Uncharted
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-14
Updated: 2012-05-14
Packaged: 2017-11-05 08:29:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/404370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/driedvoices/pseuds/driedvoices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nate takes a spill off a rooftop. Sully doesn't handle it well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	honest thieves

There's nothing Nate hates more than waking up someplace and not knowing how he got there. 

Sully, now the proud owner of several tiny scars on his forearm in the precise shape of a hung-over teenager's fingernails, learned this the hard way. That's why he spends the night in a rickety old chair in Nate's room after he hauls the kid back to the hotel. It's not 'cause—he's not _worried_. It's just that he's had Nate around long enough to know that his temper is explosive, and he's not sure that this shithole they're staying in could survive the impact. 

And. That's a lot of bandages. Sully tilts the chair on its back legs and waits. 

Nate comes to at a little after three in the morning, gasping and groaning like every breath is a gutpunch. "Goddamn," he says quietly, and runs a hand through his hair. 

Sully whistles to grab his attention. Nate sends an irate glare in his direction, eyes squinted up against the jaundiced yellow lamplight. "Morning, sunshine," he leers. 

Nate gropes at the nightstand until he finds the switch to the lamp, and it takes a few minutes for Sully's eyes to adjust, to see anything except Nate's reaching arm, swathed in moonlight. 

"Looks dark to me," Nate says, and Sully has to laugh. "What happened?"

"You fell," Sully tells him, clearing his throat. "Pretty fucking far." Nate wrinkles his forehead, straining. "Like, off the top of a damn building far."

"Off—oh. I remember. I—ha, I guess I misjudged it a little." 

"You think?"

Nate shrugs, the dim outline of his shoulders saying _lay off_. "I always think there's more of me than there is."

Sully considers that for a minute: he never thinks twice about sending Nate out to risk his neck, not until the hindsight kicks in, and he doesn't ever feel like he's taking care of Nate, not in any way that counts. He never looks down at Nate. It never occurred to him that he ought to. 

"Me too," Sully says, and reaches for his lighter. 

"Don't smoke in here," Nate gripes. "It stinks like hell." Sully rolls his eyes and Nate looks around, starting to comprehend that the here they're in now isn't the here they woke up in. "Where are we?"

"Hotel."

"Not the one we were in last night." 

"The manager and I had a difference of opinion." 

Nate snorts. "I bet. Did you—change my clothes?"

Sully shifts. "Are you covered in blood right now?" Nate's eyes look glassy in the dark, colorless and reflective. 

"You carried me back here." Sully thinks it's supposed to be a question. 

"Nobody saw. Your dignity's intact." He should go back to his own room now. Nate's awake and lucid and probably not concussed, and he's been up half the night and he can _enjoy_ a fucking cigar in his own room and not have to crack the window or hear someone bitch incessantly, and even more, he won't have to be having this conversation, won't have to watch Nate pick at a band-aid on his face, look at him like he's some artifact on display that he hasn't figured out how to get to yet. 

He still remembers the way Nate looked at Drake's ring, under glass. Out of reach. 

Sully needs a drink. 

Nate doesn't seem to _care_ , though, because he just glares in Sully's direction. "Cut the shit, I'm just trying to—" 

"Trying to _what_?" Sully says. He wouldn't quite call it an explosion, but. There are definitely people the next town over who heard that. 

"To remember. Christ." Nate looks at him like he's grown another head. "What did you think?"

Sully stands up and rolls out the crick in his neck. "I think my ass is numb from sitting here to make sure you didn't wake up choking on your own blood. I'm going to bed." 

"No, you're not," Nate says, rocking up onto his knees and tugging on the hem of Sully's shirt as he's walking to the door. "You're supposed to be straight with me. No bullshit, right?" 

And Sully is not such a horrible person that he thinks Nate is making that face on purpose, that he has any comprehension of what he _looks_ like right now, all strained and pleading. Like it hurts him to ask for something, like he's waiting for the kick in the ribs. That, historically, is Sully's one true Nate-related weakness; he wants him to not want. For anything. 

He stands still and stares at the door.

"Don't just—god." Nate gives a long-suffering sigh. "Have you always been such an asshole?"

"Part of my charm."

"Well, stop trying to be charming," Nate commands. "I just want to—" He pauses, gives a little huff of frustration and pulls on Sully's shirt again. When that fails to garner results, he grabs Sully's wrist, enough calluses on his fingers for a man twice his age. "Turn around. Look at me." 

Sully tries hard to find the part of him that knows how to say no. He opens his eyes and sees Nate's strange smile, and knows that part doesn't exist. "Happy now, kid?" 

"Not kid," Nate says with venom. "Not now." But he _is_ a kid, still growing into himself, even if he knows his history better than Sully does and has bouts of solemnity that rival a few monks that Sully knew back in the day. Sully's probably old enough to be his _father_ as far as that goes, and that is an idea that disturbs him on so many levels, because if Nate's not a kid, then—

Nate leans up and there is contact, glorious and amateur, and if he's not a kid then that means that this is happening, that Sully is letting this happen, actively destroying any and all evidence of morality he possesses. 

Sully kisses back. Of fucking _course_ he does. And Nate, he tenses up a little, waiting for the punch-line, and Sully should take that as his cue to get the hell out of dodge but he doesn't, and Nate uses those few seconds to wrap his arms around Sully's neck and tug him down further. Sully lets his hands drift down to Nate's sides awkwardly, and then less so, as he charts the outline of his ribs through his t-shirt. 

"Okay," says Nate when he pulls away, breathing shaky against Sully's neck. "That was—unexpected." 

"You started it," Sully points out, runs his fingers lightly over Nate's spine, tries not to show just how much he likes the shiver he gets in response. 

"I didn't think you'd—fuck. I figured you just walk out and we'd pretend I was delirious or something." 

"Not going anywhere, pal." 

"Okay," Nate says again, a tinny laugh lurking in the back of his throat. "So, I really didn't think this far ahead." His fingers wind themselves tighter in Sully's shirt, while Sully tries to force his own to pull away. 

"This is news?" he deadpans in lieu of success, and Nate gives him a withering look. 

"Shove it, Sullivan." His thumb has inched its way up, tracing illegible sentiments onto Sully's clavicle. He keeps his eyes there, won't bring them up to Sully's. "What happens now?"

Sully taps lightly on Nate's vertebrae. "Your move." 

"That's a first," Nate grumbles, but he tilts his head up and tries his best to stare Sully down, does a pretty admirable job considering the way he has to crane his neck just to look him in the eye. "I want you to stay, for a start," he says, and lets go of Sully's shirt suddenly, scooting back on the bed to give Sully room to sit. 

There's Nate. There's the door. Just about equidistant, if you've got an eye for that sort of thing. 

Sully is a despicable human being. He sits down gingerly on the corner of the bed, rolling his eyes when Nate tuts and nudges him with a foot. "You're still pretty banged up," Sully argues. 

"Doesn't mean you've got to quarantine me," Nate quips, grabbing Sully by the wrist and tugging him up. "I haven't broken yet."

"Came pretty damn close," Sully gripes, but Nate just tugs again, pulls Sully down on top of him and keeps pulling until Sully's close enough to kiss. And it makes Sully sick to his stomach to think about it, but he can't help but wondering who else Nate has done this with, has done _anything_ with, because he kisses like a teenager, yes, but a teenager who knows what he's getting into, one who knows the preamble and the resolution. He tries to picture Nate with anyone, anybody other than himself, and fails miserably. He gives a little groan of frustration, and Nate gasps, lips stuttering. Sully pulls back to breathe, to study Nate's face, all red-cheeks and blown pupils. 

"You're really good at that," Nate says dimly, and flinches a little when Sully's hand rests on his hip.

"Not my first rodeo, buddy," he responds. "You alright?" 

"Not mine, either," Nate says, ignoring the question, and Sully wishes he hadn't said anything at all. Nate's eyes are hard, glinting like old metal, and—he hadn't meant it as a challenge, but Nate's obviously taking it like one, and he pushes on Sully's shoulder until he flips, lands on his back with a thud. And Sully is saying, "Nathan, Nate," and meaning, _wait, think about this_ , but all Nate does is grin up at him, say, "That's more like it," and stumble his way down Sully's legs to fumble with his zipper. 

"This isn't," Sully grits out, "fucking quid pro quo." His hands are knotted tightly in the sheets, white-knuckled and pointedly not touching Nate, as if that makes a difference, somehow. 

"That's pretty much the extent of your Latin, isn't it?" Nate quips, and his breath is hot on Sully's stomach. "Actually, that's kind of exactly what it is. Only not the way you're thinking." And Sully wants to—defend himself, is the phrase that comes to mind, which is contextually awful—but Nate grabs him by the wrist and lays his hand on his head, and that's Nate's mouth on his dick, and Sully groans, gives up and tightens his fingers in the knots of Nate's hair. 

Nate makes a tiny, wounded-animal noise in his throat at that, and it runs up and down Sully's backbone. He keeps his hand on Nate's head, but he doesn't-- _will_ not push him, even though he's pretty sure that's what Nate wants. It's not bothering him too badly, though, because, Nate's lips have the same confidence around him as they have around the shape of his history lessons, his favorite curses. Everything he does is clumsy and deliberate, and when Nate chokes a little, taking him in too deep, Sully hauls him up by his shirt collar and comes with Nate pressed flush against him. 

"Shit," he says finally, after a few too-long moments of panting, watching the way his breath made Nate's hair flutter. "God, Nate."

"Gonna take that as a compliment," Nate says, muffled into Sully's neck. He's still hard against Sully's leg, shaking a little, and Sully reaches a hand down between them, gives a whispered "c'mere." Nate obliges, sighing, lets himself be rolled over so that Sully can reach him more easily. But he keeps his fingers tight around Sully's forearm. 

"Why are you doing this?" he asks, low, and Sully pulls back like he's been burned. 

"I can stop, if—" Sully starts, immediately trying to put as much distance between them as possibly, but Nate shakes his head and tugs Sully back to him. 

"No. Really no. Don't stop, I just. I need to know. What it is, for you."

Sully gets Nate's fly unzipped and slips his hand underneath his boxers. Nate's whole body goes stiff. "I," Sully says slowly, considering, while he pumps Nate's cock, "am in the business of giving people what they want." 

Nate chokes. "Not gonna last," he manages, arching up into Sully's hand. "What do _you_ want?" 

If he told, Nate would laugh 'til he was blue in the face. Sully kisses him instead, on his mouth and down his jaw, his neck. Nate comes when Sully scrapes his teeth down at the juncture of his shoulder, biting down on his fist to keep quiet. Sully wants to pull his hand away but doesn't, just watches as the indentations of his teeth pale, then redden, shivering. He wipes his hand on the bed sheets and grips Nate's shoulder, waits for his eyes to open. Nate rests his forehead against Sully's chest, breathing heavy. 

"You can go, you know," he mutters, turning away from Sully just slightly. "I know you want to go back to your room and freak out about this." 

Sully feels like he's been punched. "No. No, that's not—"

"It's okay, Sully. It's fine. Go smoke, go sit up all night. It's what—it's probably what you need to do right now." Nate bumps his shoulder against Sully's. 

"I don't want to leave." I promised I wouldn't, he doesn't say. 

"But you're gonna, so get over it." Nate bites down on his lip, then pushes himself upright, not without effort. "But when you're done," he says, lips quirked in a way that isn't quite a smile, "I'll still be here." 

Sully goes out on the balcony, lights up a cigar. He wonders, vaguely, how long Nate will keep waiting on him.


End file.
